


After the End

by Anonymous



Category: Oblivion (2013)
Genre: F/M, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-13
Updated: 2016-12-13
Packaged: 2018-09-08 13:07:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8846260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Jack and Julia try to build a life together after the Tet is destroyed.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crescent_gaia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crescent_gaia/gifts).



_Julia lay on her stomach, head propped up in one hand, as she watched Jack move around the room, setting up candles and lighting them._

_“Goddamn power failures…” Jack muttered as he dug around in his bedside drawer for a box of matches._

_Julia laughed softly. “Oh, I don’t know, Jack. It’s more atmospheric like this. More romantic…” she said, resting her head on her arms._

_Jack looked at Julia, eyebrows raised. “More romantic?” he asked, finally uncovering a long-forgotten cigarette lighter from the depths of a drawer._

_Julia smiled seductively. “Uh-huh,” she said, tilting her head to the side as she watched Jack light the candle. “Whatever can we do on a rainy Sunday morning when the power’s out…?”_

_Jack smiled. “Oh, I might have an idea…”_

 

*

 

Jack’s eyes open with a start. For a moment, he has no idea where he is. Daylight is streaming in through the window, temporarily blinding him. The room is open and airy and made from rough, dark timber. He doesn’t know this place…

 

Then, he hears the trickle of the creek outside, and of the voices of his wife, their daughter, their friends, already up and about for the day. And he remembers.

 

*

 

The memory wipes worked strangely.

 

Some things come to him, fully-formed, that he couldn’t possibly remember from this life. All around him are hundreds – no, _thousands –_ of people, busily brushing past him, going about their day in a shining steel and glass metropolis long since burned to the ground.

 

There are faces – vague and blurry and half-formed – which he knows, somehow, deep down, belonged to people important to _him_. The original Jack Harper. Are they his family? His aunts and uncles and cousins, maybe?

 

Jack’s fairly sure he recognises the people who were his parents; his has the woman’s eyes and the man’s jawline and their smiles and warm and open and full of love and pride as they look at him.

 

There are, of course, other faces. Sally, who was a real woman once, before the aliens stole her face and voice for their own purposes. Vika, his dear friend.

 

And, of course, Julia. Julia. _His_ Julia. His wife. The mother of his child, a delightful little girl who has her mother’s eyes and hair and nose but his smile. A delightful little girl who he knows, somehow, deep within his bones, is no more _his_ daughter than she is the daughter of Jack Harper, Tech 49, who destroyed the Tet in a selfless act. She is the daughter of the _original_ Jack, who stayed safe within her mother’s womb through more than seventy years of being on ice.

 

The original Jack is gone. So is tech 49. But _he_ is here.

 

And Julia is still here with him. Here, but somehow, not here.

 

Jack wishes, and not for the first time, that he could somehow access not only the memories of the original Jack, but also those of Tech 49.

 

Then maybe he’d know what that haunted shadow in Julia’s eyes is.

 

*

 

One memory comes to him a lot. It’s late at night or early in the morning and somehow he knows it’s not long before their original mission to the Tet, all those years ago.

 

_“You know I love you, right?” he is saying to her._

_Julia had smirked and turned around. “I know. I-”_

_“No,” Jack had cut her off, sitting up. “I love you,” he repeated forcefully. “I really mean it. I love you like I’ve never loved anyone.”_

_Julia had frowned slightly. “What’s wrong?”_

_“What do you mean?” he had asked her quickly, looking away, eyes focusing on the empty pair of wine glasses sitting on the dresser. A farewell drink. “Nothing’s wrong.”_

_“You’re acting very strangely.”_

_“Am I?” Jack asked distantly._

_“Yes. Very strangely. You aren’t at all like yourself. Are you worried about the mission? They wouldn’t be sending us if it were that dangerous. They can’t afford to lose their best and brightest.”_

_Jack sighed deeply. “Nothing’s wrong. Really. I guess I’m just tired.”_

_Julia had frowned. Jack realised she knew there was more to it than tiredness. But she also knew that Jack wasn’t going to tell her what the matter was if he’d decided he didn’t want to worry her. Which, knowing Jack’s track record, may well be never._

_“Well, you are the insomniac from hell,” Julia said after a long moment, accepting Jack’s half-truth. “You’re worse than me.”_

_Jack smiled slightly. “I don’t sleep well without you beside me,” he had whispered faintly._

_Julia sat down next to him, hugging her husband from behind. “Well, I’m here now, holding you in my arms, no less. So you have no excuse.”_

_Jack smiled as Julia snugged into him from behind, and buried her face in Jack’s dark hair._

_“Yeah, I guess I don’t,” he said absent-mindedly as Julia ran a hand gently up and down Jack’s belly._

_After a moment, he lay back and rolled over, gathering Julia in his arms. She smiled, burying her face in the side of his neck._

_“Sleep, Jack.” Julia commanded._

_And, to Jack’s surprise, he did._

 

*

 

Jack had always been a restless sleeper. He would often toss and turn all night, sometimes accidentally kicking or nudging Julia in his sleep. For as long as he could remember, Jack had been a chronic insomniac.

 

Jack could remember many nights lying in bed with Julia, limbs entangled, her dozing peacefully in his arms as he watched late night TV: a re-run of _Rawhide_ or _Law & Order,_ or some shitty 80s movie full of strangely homoerotic shirtless volleyball games, unable to shut his brain off to get some much-needed rest.

 

But now, in this strange, brave new world of theirs, the roles were reversed. Julia was the one who couldn’t sleep. She would toss and turn for hours in a vain attempt to fall into the state of sleep that so eluded her.  

 

This got worse when nightmares haunted her. It would sometimes be weeks between these terrible nightmares that would wake Julia in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, gasping and frightened. She would call his name, Vika’s name, curling into a ball. She would wake with a start, and then hug their daughter close, gathering her up in her arms, rocking her.

 

Julia was particularly restless tonight – more restless than Jack had ever seen her – and Jack, ever the insomniac and still rested from his afternoon nap, stayed awake, trying to calm Julia without waking her.

 

For the umpteenth time, Jack wondered what haunted Julia in her sleep so badly. It wasn’t that he had never asked Julia: it was that Julia wouldn’t tell him.

 

*

 

He is in the garden with his daughter, helping her plant flowers. She is babbling away happily to him, about her favourite colours and shapes and plants and how pretty it will all look come the spring.

 

Sykes and several of the others are out scouting, for both soil that is good for sowing and harvesting crops, and also for other survivors.

 

Jack has no idea how many other Jacks there are out there, or how many other Vikas, but he knows it took Vika 51 almost a month to start speaking again after they found her and brought her here. Now, she out with those who found her, looking to rebuild their world, their civilisation. Ever the communications expert, she wants to find out if it’s possible to contact other areas of the world, to see if there is anyone left out there.

 

Rebuilding society will be a group effort, after all.

 

Julia sits on their daughter’s other side, planting vegetables. She is softly humming a melody that Jack knows is familiar, but cannot place. A lullaby, maybe?

 

“Julia?” he asks softly.

 

She looks up and smiles at him. A genuine smile, but with sadness tinging around its edges.

 

“I love you,” he blurts.

 

Julia’s eyes look a little wet. “I know,” she says.  She takes a deep breath. “I love you, too.”

 

And Jack knows she is telling the truth.


End file.
